Telephone Scam via broadband connection

Hi All,
Hope someone here can help me and shed some light on my issue.

I have fibre broadband set up with Zen ISP and a phone line set up by them.

I have a bungalow being renovated so there is no physical phone in the property and all I have connected to the router provided by Zen is a Swann SRDVR-81525H cctv system that allows me to watch live feed of the cctv cameras.
All was working fine until I had an email from Zen stating my phone bill has exceeded £50 in the space of a few days. As I have not used the phone I was shocked and investigated my itemised bill.

The bill showed a local number 01384857003 (Dudley) had been called every 5 mins exactly for 7 secs exactly for the period of 3 continuous days without fail. The call list is shown below:

7/4/2016 03.15am (single call to 0138485700 for 7 secs)
7/4/2016 13.01 pm (single call to 0138485700 for 7 secs)
7/4/2016 15.36 pm (single call to 0138485700 for 7 secs)
29/4/2016 (numerous calls every 5 mins for 7 secs)
30/04/2016 (numerous calls every 5 mins for 7 secs)
1/05/2016 (numerous calls every 5 mins for 7 secs)

After speaking to Zen I did a line check to see if my telephone line had been crossed with someone else but that was negative.

I then disconnected the DVR and I have had no charges to my telephone account.

I am aware that Swann DVR can be hacked easily (via google) but how is someone hacking this system and charging me money and making them money?

Is there anyway I can pinpoint the address the telephone is registered too?

Thanks for any help in advance

John

The old Sky boxes used to call back to home once a month to update accounts. There was a point where there was a bug and instead of calling home they were calling the talking clock - and because it didn't get the right response they kept on retrying running up high bills.

Wondering if your DVR is trying to do something similar?

What is the purpose of the DVR being connected to the phone line? I assume it is actually connected to the phone line itself rather than via the router (if via the router then it has no way of making a call anyway).

Hi Ian72,

The DVR is not connected to the phone line. It is connected to the router via a cat 5 cable to allow for live video to be streamed over the net to a smartphone app. The router is then connected via a filter to the master telephone socket. The DVR can record to its own HDD but to allow remote viewing it must be connected to a router.

Thanks
John

In which case I don't know why unplugging the DVR would stop the phone calls as a DVR cannot make calls via an Ethernet connection on a router. There is no route for the DVR to be able to cause it to dial. And the router, if connected via the DSL interface also cannot make calls as there is nothing in there to dial a number.

Personally I think there is something else that has caused this. I would normally suspect something like a house alarm system or possibly crossed billing (it doesn't necessarily need a line to be crossed for charges to be incurred on the wrong bill).

You are not alone, this is obviously a scam.

Place that number into Google search and you will see that people have had the same issue since 2011.

http://www.phonespamfilter.co.uk/search.php/01384857003

http://callernotes.org/phonenumber/01384857003

there are other comments on phone number check sites.

Trading standards / police may be a good place to start.

Hi AdrianPH,

Yes I noticed a few others have been charged for unwanted or unmade calls.
I would just like to understand how they are doing it.

I have deduced it must be the DVR as I am no longer being charged since I unplugged the network cable. Literally the minute I unplugged, I have not been charged since. Zen ISP tech support did mention DNOS (Denial Of Service Attack) but not too clued up on how that would work in my situation.

Regards
john

The DVR is not technically or physically capable of making calls via the Ethernet connection. This must be coincidence.

It can only be that someone has plugged a phone in and dialled this number, or your line is crossed, etc I guess. Perhaps there is an extension elsewhere you are not aware of.

Hi Nemeth782,
The number has been rang every 5 mins exactly for 7 seconds exactly add day and night over a period of 3 days continuously so I can rule out someone making a call. It will be an automated hack but I am unsure how it is being done.
Zen ISP have done a line check and confirmed the line is not crossed.

Regards
john

As I and others have said if the DVR is only connected via Ethernet then it cannot dial the phone. There is something more to the case than that but without doing investigation it would be difficult to pin point as likelihood is that whatever is causing it is something you don't know about - and if you don't know then it is going to be difficult for us to get enough info to diagnose.

Personally I would plug the DVR back in and see if it starts doing any calls again. But, if you plug in via Ethernet and the only thing connected to your line is the router via its DSL port then there just is no way it should be able to connect a call.

John

The line being called is some sort of remote 'modem' ( Try dialling it!) which is trying to set up a data call to whatever is dialling it.

Somewhere on the property you will have a sensor that is trying to 'call home'.

I have seen similar instances where a remote water sensor has had a short and kept dialling every 10sec, it would drop out then try again.

The offending device could be a smart meter, water sensor, Septic tank, an alarm, even a health alarm.

Zen should be able to credit you as the calls are obvoiusly invalid.

There is NO direct way to make money from getting people to call a geographic number. (But there are a couple of indirect ways to fiddle an employer if you are a remote call handlers who wants to take a lot of calls without doing anything! 99.9% sure this is not a case.)

You don't use a phone, so can you be sure that your line has the right no.? If not, these calls must be initiated from elsewhere.

Does the phone announce your correct no. when you dial 1470 17070?

Hi, I have checked the line and it is the correct number. Since I disconnected the DVR a few days ago I have not had any more charges of calls to the suspicious number.
Regards
John

Are you sure you haven't inherited an alarm system from the previous owner because that's where my money is that's causing these calls?

Unscrew the faceplate of your master BT socket and look for extension wires or for an additional phone wire running into the socket. If you are sure you don't have an extensions in the house cut them if you find them there. If you're unsure, post a pic of the internal wiring of this socket and someone here will guide you.

How can a DVR connected by ethernet make a phone call?

What seems to have happened is a sysadmin not telling the truth after your calls and they silently fixed it (oops)!, and the coincidence at the same time of turning the DVR off appeared to fix it.

It probably has a lot to do with this.

How exactly are the two linked in your opinion? As I have only just changed the master socket (to ensure all wiring is up to date), Please explain how you think they are linked????

In reply to a post by god4aday:

How exactly are the two linked in your opinion....

I don't know but the likelihood of the fault being caused by you messing with the BT plant is much, much higher than the impossibility of an ethernet only device making a PSTN call!

In reply to a post by Deadbeat:

In reply to a post by god4aday:

How exactly are the two linked in your opinion....

I don't know but the likelihood of the fault being caused by you messing with the BT plant is much, much higher than the impossibility of an ethernet only device making a PSTN call!

I don't wish to throw a spanner in the works but there are devices that ONLY have an Ethernet connection but have the ability to instigate a PSTN call. It could be a gate or door entry system or more usually a VoIP phone. Just saying.

The only way you are going to solve the issue imo, is to get someone from Zen [an engineer perhaps] to visit you and then let him/her test with and without the DVR connected.
But it is unlikely that video devices connected by Ethernet could be the cause.
A crossed line could, but Zen have already ruled that out.?

There is one possible reason though, the DVR might have developed an internal fault that is messing with other external wiring and somehow making calls from your line, if as you say the problem goes away when you disconnect the DVR then it is part of the mix somewhere.?

Edited by deleted (Thu 12-May-16 01:10:48)

Are you saying a device connected to an Ethernet socket can dial via the phone line the DSL is delivered over? If so, then I would say that isn't true. It may well do a VoIP connection via an external service but that would not rack up costs on the physical phone line the DSL is connected to.

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

..... I don't wish to throw a spanner in the works but there are devices that ONLY have an Ethernet connection but have the ability to instigate a PSTN call. It could be a gate or door entry system or more usually a VoIP phone. Just saying.

Concrete examples please. VOIP cannot be considered as PSTN.

Edited by Deadbeat (Thu 12-May-16 09:32:36)

In reply to a post by ian72:

Are you saying a device connected to an Ethernet socket can dial via the phone line the DSL is delivered over? If so, then I would say that isn't true. It may well do a VoIP connection via an external service but that would not rack up costs on the physical phone line the DSL is connected to.

The pair coming into the home provides POTS and a Broadband service. A hosted VoIP service uses the broadband leg so clearly the answer to your question is no.

My early posting was only to refute the statement that it was impossible to call a POTS number from a device that had only had a Ethernet connection. Nothing more.

However, calls made from such VoIP enabled devices using Zen's domestic VoIP offering gives a presentation number identical to the POTS number that the broadband service uses. Zen's rendered accounts are quite clear about call charges over POTS and VoIP but identify each in the public telephone service format so it would be quite easy, with a causal glance of the bill, to believe call charges were being racked up on the POTS service whereas they were really VoIP calls using the broadband provision.

Coming back to OPs original posting, he states that the only device connected to his router was the DVR device. If this is 100% true, then this posting has no reverence to his issue,

In reply to a post by Deadbeat:

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

..... I don't wish to throw a spanner in the works but there are devices that ONLY have an Ethernet connection but have the ability to instigate a PSTN call. It could be a gate or door entry system or more usually a VoIP phone. Just saying.

Concrete examples please. VOIP cannot be considered as PSTN.

What I was trying to say, but failed in your eyes, was that an Ethernet only connected device can call a POTS number. It was suggested in this thread that this was impossible.

I think you took the post you are replying to incorrectly.

They said you couldn't make a PSTN call from a Ethernet line - the meaning being you couldn't use Ethernet to initiate the PSTN connection - but you can call a remote PSTN connection from it. As you can see I am finding it difficult to word the difference - nobody said you couldn't use VoIP to call a PSTN number what the OP was saying was the Ethernet device was creating a PSTN to 3rd party connection which you agree is impossible as we have all been saying.